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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Hopeful dreams',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/02.jpg" alt="A cluster of mushrooms" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed it was the day of my $a[laser] treatment.
		My beard grew out in a matter of hours, short, but so dense that you couldn&apos;t see my skin through it.
		And for some reason, it was grey like my father&apos;s.
		I knew I wasn&apos;t supposed to pull at it, but I couldn&apos;t help it.
		I had to know if this was the last of my follicles having worked their way out of my skin.
		I tugged at a patch on the left side of my face, and it came right off.
		All of it in the area I&apos;d pulled.
		I had this odd bare patch on one side now.
		I was ecstatic!
		I&apos;d let the rest fall out on it&apos;s own, but now I needed to walk around looking funny for a while.
		That&apos;d be fine.
		After this, I wasn&apos;t sure I&apos;d even need a third treatment.
	</p>
	<p>
		But then I had to wake up.
		Drats.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="prayer">
	<h2>No more prayer</h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;m done praying about these bible chapters and keeping a log of said prayers.
		I was already aware that Yahweh isn&apos;t real before the missionaries showed up.
		At this point, I&apos;m praying to humour them, but they don&apos;t know whether I&apos;m actually doing it or not and they keep changing the rules as to how and when I should pray.
		Their latest change to the rules is drastically reducing the speed at which I can read and process their mythology.
		And speaking of their mythology, the bible&apos;s claims are so ridiculous that it makes it even more clear that their religion, as well as the rest of Christianity, is a lie.
		We&apos;re talking Greek-mythology-level amounts of garbage here.
		I mean, don&apos;t get me wrong.
		Much of this story is quite entertaining.
		But so is Greek mythology.
		It doesn&apos;t mean that Zeus is reigning over the world from Mount Olympus though.
		So anyway, I&apos;m done.
		It&apos;ll be much faster to read this if I&apos;m not worrying about having to fit whole chapters in at a time alongside two prayers.
		I can read even when I&apos;m not alone (so I can&apos;t pray) and don&apos;t have much time (so I can read and write about a few verses at a time).
	</p>
	<p>
		Besides, my prayers have been becoming increasingly insincere at I see just how horrid of an entity Yahweh actually is.
		If I don&apos;t stop praying now, my prayers are only going to get worse.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Advances in output devices are largely unnecessary.
			Input devices allow information to be passed from the brain of a user into the machine, while output devices allow information to be transferred from the machine to the brain of the user.
			There are several types of output devices needed, such as a monitor for visual information and speakers for auditory information.
			I think I&apos;ve even heard of a device that outputs Braille for blind people to read with their fingers.
			However, most of what we need for output has been around for a while.
		</p>
		<p>
			The issue right now is input.
			Output can be given at very high volumes, but input still takes a long time to transfer to the computer in comparison.
			As such, work is being done to develop faster ways to input data.
			Hand inputs, both discrete (such as a keyboard) and continuous (such as a mouse) are widely used, but other, faster methods are being developed.
		</p>
		<h3>Bodily motion</h3>
		<p>
			Non-hand body movements can now be tracked with a {$a['3D']} tracker.
			The paper doesn&apos;t mention how this is done, but I&apos;ve seen it done with both only cameras and with special sensors worn on the body.
			The paper mentions that even the gaze of the eyes can be tracked in such a way, which obviously requires the camera option, as you can&apos;t put things directly on your eyes and expect to still be able to see.
			The paper mentions virtual reality as an alternate class of inputs, but says this is accomplished via tracking bodily movements through worn sensors <a href="https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~jacob/papers/sdcr.pdf">(Jacob, n.d.)</a>.
			So again, the input side of this is just bodily movement trackers, while the output side is moveable monitors and speakers.
		</p>
		<h3>Vocal input</h3>
		<p>
			Vocal input can be used now as well.
			The paper mentions unrecognised speech input, word recognition, and continuous speech recognition.
			If unrecognised speech input is what I think it is, it refers to simple recording.
			You can speak into a microphone as input and the machine can record what you&apos;ve said so you can play it back in the voice you said it in.
			More interesting though is word and speech recognition.
			Using it, you could, for example, dictate a paper to the machine and have it convert it into text for you.
			With the modern level of technology, you might have to go back and fix a few words afterwards, and you&apos;ll definitely need to go back and fix a lot of punctuation, but it allows for much faster input so you can get your papers written quicker.
			It&apos;s the sort of thing I&apos;d love to have when writing my journal!
			Maybe one day freely-licensed speech-to-text software will be available and I&apos;ll be able to write my journal entries that way.
			Another way speech input can be used is for vocal commands.
			Currently, vocal commands require a restricted subset of natural language, and it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future <a href="https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~jacob/papers/sdcr.pdf">(Jacob, n.d.)</a>.
			It&apos;s just too hard to get computers to understand our complex language for the time being.
		</p>
		<h3>Conclusion</h3>
		<p>
			It seems that voice and body motion trackers are two of the modern advances in input technology.
			People are working on using them creatively to increase the flow of information from human to machine, though that flow still is rather lopsided in the other direction, for the time being.
			Computers are able to give us output much faster than we&apos;re able to give them input.
			Honestly, I don&apos;t see the lopsidedness changing anytime soon, but we are working to bridge the gap and bring input speeds up a little closer to output speeds.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Jacob, R. J. K. (n.d.). <a href="https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~jacob/papers/sdcr.pdf">The Future of Input Devices</a>. Retrieved from <code>https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~jacob/papers/sdcr.pdf</code>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Dietary intake</h2>
	<p>
		I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast.
		For lunch, I had pretzels and juice again; 284 grams of pretzels and 390 grams of juice.
	</p>
	<p>
		On a typical Thursday night, I have a veggie burrito and a 1.2-litre slushy for dinner.
		I think I didn&apos;t get the veggie burrito last Thursday because I was feeling self-conscious.
		Also last week, I started getting the vitamin water slushies instead of the regular ones, but only because that&apos;s when they became available.
		The convenience store I get the slushies from started stocking those only last week.
		This week, the restaurant I get the burritos from accidentally gave me the wrong burrito, so I got a bite with a bit of sour cream and cheese in it, which typically isn&apos;t something I allow in my diet.
		They swapped the burrito (I didn&apos;t even ask, they just noticed their mistake), but after eating half of it, I clumsily dropped the other half while unlocking my bike.
		So I only got half a burrito this week.
		This would have been one of those times that sitting down to eat like the dietician said I should would have definitely helped.
		I sit to eat at home, but after an hour-long ride to Eugene for the $a[EUGLUG] meeting, and also not wanting to rudely eat dinner in front of the other member, I tend to eat the burrito as I finish the trip.
	</p>
	<p>
		I ate sixty small jalapeño pretzel chunks at the meeting.
		I was hungry from only getting half of the solid part of my dinner, but also wanted to eat less pretzel chunks than last week.
		I also had another energy bar on the way.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religious study</h2>
	<p>
		I thought that the missionaries stood me up today.
		In fact, they were so late that I wrote that they <strong>*had*</strong> stood me up, and I had to go back and modify my entry.
		It&apos;s a good thing I wasn&apos;t planning to go anywhere this morning, or I&apos;d be quite frustrated.
		Seriously.
		They were late by an hour and a half.
	</p>
	<p>
		I guess today, most of what the missionaries had to say just rolled off me.
		I was probably just a bit distracted, seeing as they&apos;d wasted an hour and a half of my time.
		The one talked about there being knowledge that&apos;s greater than evidence, so if evidence contradicts the knowledge, it&apos;s the evidence that&apos;s wrong.
		That doesn&apos;t sound like knowledge at all.
	</p>
	<p>
		We reviewed the five principles Jesus taught again.
		One day, I&apos;ll probably be able to remember more than just #4.
		Anyway, they are as follows:
	</p>
	<ol start="0">
		<li>
			Faith
		</li>
		<li>
			Repentance
		</li>
		<li>
			Baptism
		</li>
		<li>
			The gift of the Holy Ghost
		</li>
		<li>
			Enduring until the end
		</li>
	</ol>
	<p>
		Also, apparently, repentance is just changing oneself.
		I thought it was apologising and asking for forgiveness.
		It&apos;s not.
		So I already repent all the time when I try to improve myself.
		I just don&apos;t repent quite in the direction Jesus supposedly wants.
	</p>
	<p>
		I learned there&apos;s two main types of baptisms.
		The one I saw was a child of record baptism.
		The child was already raised in the ward, so they are confirmed a member of the church right after the baptism, as there&apos;s nothing further that needs to be done.
		In a convert baptism, the convert is instead confirmed in a sacrament meeting.
		Why?
		So the new convert is able to see other members welcome them to the ward.
		In other words, the fact that one confirmation was done right then and there and one done the next day at the sacrament meeting had nothing to do with which ward was the new member&apos;s home ward, but instead whether or not they were raised in the religion or not.
	</p>
	<p>
		The missionaries assigned me &quot;homework&quot;, asking that I think about trust, the basis of morality, whether or not the god of Israel is real, and if so, whether or not I could come to love him.
		They also asked me to set aside logic, dive deep into the core of my being, and decide what I want.
		Um.
		The core of my being is very logical.
		Without logic, I have next to nothing in me.
		Also, I want the truth.
		Without logic, you&apos;ll be led astray.
		You won&apos;t find the truth.
		Evidence says Yahweh isn&apos;t real, or at the very least, isn&apos;t as depicted in the bible.
		And if he were as depicted in the bible, he&apos;d be an unlovable monster.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, another baptism is being held this Saturday.
		Which type?
		Come to think of it, I&apos;m not sure.
		I&apos;ll probably be there though, both because this week won&apos;t be as busy as last week and because the missionaries actually gave me some warning this time.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="y">
	<h2>The enigmatic Y</h2>
	<p>
		During my busy period between terms, I received an odd note from the letter carrier.
		They said someone had sent a letter to this address, but not specified which apartment number.
		The letter had no return address, and was addressed to &quot;Y&quot;.
		They wanted to know if I was Y, so they could deliver my mail.
		I really meant to do something about the note, but I was way too busy, and put it off until I had time, but felt it was way too late to try to wait by the mailbox to respond.
		I don&apos;t think I&apos;m Y though.
		I mean, my surname starts with &quot;Y&quot;, but I don&apos;t know who in the world would write to me by my last initial.
		I sort of wanted to say I might be Y so I could take a look at the letter, but it would have been wrong of me to do so.
		I would have had to tell them it likely wasn&apos;t me.
	</p>
	<p>
		Now, I&apos;ve received a postcard meant for this &quot;y&quot; character.
		Lower case this time, and perhaps the postmaster just upper-cased it last time because it was a name, and thus a proper noun.
		Who is y?
		Like the letter mentioned before, there&apos;s no return address and no apartment number.
		I guess the letter carrier decided I must be Y after all, and delivered it to my box.
		This is a different letter though.
		I mean, I wouldn&apos;t call a postcard a letter at all, but this postcard seems to be postmarked for April 17.
		That&apos;s after my break between terms, which means it&apos;s after my busy period was, and thus was sent <strong>*after*</strong> I&apos;d received the note from the letter carrier from before.
		I wonder what the letter was about.
		That never ended up with me.
	</p>
	<p>
		As for this postcard, it really doesn&apos;t say anything.
		It&apos;s got stickers on it and someone wrote on it wishing y a great day.
		One of the stickers has a hashtag on it that led me to someone&apos;s website, <del>but I don&apos;t think this person is actually responsible for the postcard, given that the sticker also has a name on it that doesn&apos;t match.
		But it&apos;s a given name only, so I can&apos;t track it to anywhere.</del>
		<ins>Actually, I think I&apos;ve gotten somewhere.
		Using the hashtag combined with the name, I found this page: <a href="https://thebloggess.com/2019/03/20/reaching-out/">Reaching out. | The Bloggess</a>.
		They&apos;re sending postcards and notes to one another.
		My address wasn&apos;t in the comments, so perhaps it was sent to me by mistake, but I think I&apos;m onto something now.
		As they&apos;re sending uplifting notes to people they don&apos;t know, the vague message telling me to have a great day would certainly fit in with those mentioned here.
		And to top it off, <a href="https://tinyheathens.com/">one of the commenters</a> has the given name mentioned on the sticker.
		When I quit searching for my street name and started searching for the name &quot;y&quot;, I found the address in the comments.
		Comment #796.
		I didn&apos;t see it when I searched for the street because I&apos;d searched for &quot;F Street&quot; and not the abbreviated &quot;F St&quot;.</ins>
		Mystery solved.
		Who decided to put my apartment complex on the list though, and without an apartment number listed?
	</p>
</section>
END
);
